The film-maker and author Xiaolu Guo and the novelist Sara Baume have been announced as judges for this year’s Goldsmiths Prize. The annual £10,000 award, which runs in collaboration with the New Statesman, celebrates writing that “breaks the mould, opens up new possibilities for the novel form, and embodies the spirit of invention”.
Guo, whose novel A Lover’s Discourse was nominated for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2020, is an award-winning film-maker, memoirist and novelist, who was born in China and now lives in London. Her most recent book, Radical, was published by Chatto & Windus in 2023.
Baume, an Irish writer, is the author of three novels, two of which, A Line Made by Walking and Seven Steeples, were previously shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. Her most recent work is a book of creative non-fiction, Handiwork (Tramp Press, 2020), and in 2023 she was named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists.
The critic Lola Seaton joins them on the judging panel. Seaton is an associate editor at New Left Review and a contributing writer at the New Statesman. The panel will be chaired by Abigail Shinn, a lecturer in early modern literature and culture at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the author of Conversion Narratives in Early Modern England: Tales of Turning.
The winner of last year’s Goldsmiths Prize was Cuddy by Benjamin Myers, which the judges described as “a book of remarkable range, virtuosity and creative daring”. Other previous winners include Ali Smith, Isabel Waidner, Lucy Ellmann and Kevin Barry.
This year’s prize opens for submissions on 19 January 2024 and the winner will be announced in November.
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